American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U. S. Military History

F
RY 
M
E 
N
OT
Y
ou cannot be afraid to take your shot. When you see someone
with an IED or a rifle maneuvering toward your men, you have clear
reason to fire. (The fact that an Iraqi had a gun would not
necessarily mean he could be shot.) The ROEs were specific, and in
most cases the danger was obvious.
But there were times when it wasn’t 
exactly
clear, when a
person almost surely was an insurgent, probably was doing evil, but
there was still some doubt because of the circumstances or the
surroundings—the way he moved, for example, wasn’t toward an
area where troops were. A lot of times a guy seemed to be acting
macho for friends, completely unaware that I was watching him, or
that there were American troops nearby.
Those shots I didn’t take.
You couldn’t—you had to worry about your own ass. Make an
unjustified shot and you could be charged with murder.
I often would sit there and think, “I know this is
bad; I saw him doing such and such down the street the other day,
but here he’s not doing anything, and if I shoot him, I won’t be able
to justify it for the lawyers. I’ll fry.” Like I said, there is paperwork
for everything. Every confirmed kill had documentation, supporting
evidence, and a witness.

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So I wouldn’t shoot.
There weren’t a lot of those, especially in Fallujah, but I was
always extremely aware of the fact that every killing might have to
be justified to the lawyers.
My attitude was: if my justification is I 
thought
my target would
do something bad, then I wasn’t justified. He had to be 
doing
something bad.
Even with that standard, there were plenty of targets. I was
averaging two and three a day, occasionally less, sometimes much
more, with no end in sight.
A
squat water tower rose above the rooftops a few blocks from
one of the roofs where we were perched. It looked like a wide
yellow tomato.
We’d already moved a few blocks past the tower when a
Marine decided to climb up and retrieve the Iraqi flag flying from
the grid work. As he climbed, the insurgents who had lain low
during the earlier attack began firing on him. Within seconds, he was
shot up and trapped.
We backtracked over, moving along the streets and across the
rooftops until we found the men shooting at him. When we had the
area cleared, we sent up one of our guys to retrieve the flag. After
we got it down, we sent it to the Marine in the hospital.

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